Freelancing, Apple Store, Music and Blogging

Freelance Projects

For the last couple of months I’ve been involved with a couple of freelance game projects. I’m happy to say that they are healthy and going well. Freelancing is something that’s new to me and I’m still trying to develop a better opinion about it, but currently the Freelance/Work On My Own Indie Game Projects hybrid works for me.

I’ve also been seeing a lot more interest in game prototyping type of projects. Where a company or an individual(with a game idea and money) hires a developer to prototype it to gauge if they want to take it into next stage. Sometimes the prototype might turn to a full out demo project used for presentation/ funding needs. If you’re on either side of this equation please contact me and see how we can help each other out.

Apple App Developer

I’m officially an Apple App Developer. I’ve signed up, paid my 99 dollar yearly fee, got all the provisioning setup and got one of my quick prototypes up and running on my old iPhone. I’ll be spending the next couple of weeks poking at the different options and features available and develop some type of strategy on how to occupy the Apple App store in the future.

Music

One of my good friends has sent me Game Music he’s been working on this week. Sound and Music has always been a concern for me, as it’s another thing I’d have to worry about on my indie game projects. It’s not something I have much experience doing and it’s nice to have somebody to fill that role. The tunes he has sent are great and it’s another thing I can tick off from my worry/concerns list as he seems committed to helping out in that regard.

Blogging

I started this blog about a month ago. It’s been fun so far. Thanks for all the feedback and support. I find trying to convert thoughts into written form a good practice and it makes me think about what I’m doing a bit more in-depth. I hope there is some value in it for you. I personally love to read about how other game developers work. If you blog about game development let me know where I can find you in comments below, email or a social network.

5 Replies to “Freelancing, Apple Store, Music and Blogging”

Great post, as always – it sounds like you and I are in a very similar boat.

I’m also doing a lot of prototyping work for clients in the mobile and social game space. As you say, it works well if you can manage your time well. I, too, am also building an indie game project for iPhone and Android. We should talk tech offline. :)

I’m always looking for others to partner with, as it’s really helpful to have solid providers to help with extra bandwidth, or to share work when bandwidth is needed.

To offer your readers some more to consider:
1) To be a design consultant, you need to be absolutely self-starting, results-focused, and deliver on time, consistently. Even when full-time staff members, Game Designers are always fighting a perception of ‘not really doing anything’. If you’re going to be a contractor, you’ll need to go out of your way to assure the client that they’ll get what they paid for, and that they’ll be happy with that. They don’t care if you don’t know the toolset, they don’t care if it works on your machine. Your job is to make THEM look good, or to give THEM what they need in their prototype. The rest is noise.
2) You’ll need experience. Nobody wants to hire a contract game designer with no shipped titles. The higher-grossing, the better.
3) You’ll need a lot of tools. They may want it to be delivered online (via a secure website). They may want it to run on their iOS devices, delivered via TestFlight. (And, like Tomasz and I, you’ll need to be an Apple developer so you can deploy those builds.) They may even give you access to their source code so you can write the script / dialog directly into their Excel files for a Facebook game. I’ve had all 3 of these and more happen – in the last 5 months.

It’s the most incredible job, but it’s not easy. You will work nights and weekends, but you will love it.

Hi Aaron, looks like we have a lot to talk about. My current freelance projects have come through already established connections and friends and it’s not something I thought about initially but since the opportunities presented themselves I thought I give it a shot. Freelancing for me does several things: keeps me working from home, sharpens skills because clients will have more specific requirements according to their production needs, and it provides another layer of income. There are still things I will have to dig deeper in regards of how the business side of things works. You seem to have been at it for some time now. If you’re interested in sharing your experience with freelancing I’d love to have you write a post and feature it here.

Sounds fun. I don’t know that I’ve been at it longer. I have been freelancing since July 2011 – so only a few months. But like you said, it’s sink or swim, and I do have some production/business background experience from my last job. So forming a corporation, dealing with contracts, etc. wasn’t as much of a hurdle as it might be to someone who’s been doing only game design or engineering for a living. It’s all about filling in the gaps in your skillset.

Sure, I’d write a blog post and you could feature it. Send me an email and we can discuss details.

Thanks for the links Caroparo. So far I’ve only set one up. Not too many troubles so far. I was able to test out couple of prototypes both on my iPad 2 and an old iPhone. The first link will come handy when I’m juggling more than one project at a time.